There are a wide variety of applications where seeds need to be stored, protected and preserved, and at some time later be easily, efficiently, and accurately identified and/or possibly individually selected, retrieved or discharged from one or more containers for reconfiguration into another container based upon the presence or absence of at least one advantageous property associated with the seed.
One notable example of this can be found in research and development directed to identifying and perpetuating advantageous seed properties. For instance, plant researchers often classify seeds in specific groups. In the case of seeds, a test portion (e.g., a piece, sample, or chip from the seed) may be removed from the seed for testing, and the remaining portion may be a viable seed portion that can be stored collectively with other viable seed portions or individually to protect against degradation or harm and to maintain viability. The viable seed portion in such cases may be capable of being planted to produce a plant bearing characteristics corresponding to the characteristics identified during analysis of the respective seed portion. The information learned from analyzing the test portions may indicate if the remaining, viable portion of a particular seed has desired properties as a result of a biological trait, a genetic trait, a phenotypic trait, a morphological trait, or pedigree.
Furthermore, the information learned from analyzing the test portion can be linked with the individual seed from which it originated (e.g., the viable seed portion) using an indexing system to correlate the two seed parts. Thus, by comparing a seed selection criterion with the information known about the seed, the remaining viable seed portion may be accurately identified, recovered, and used to produce plants exhibiting the desired characteristics.
As a result, there is a need for a high throughput apparatus and method that can easily, efficiently, and accurately select certain stored seeds or seed portions from a group of seeds or seed portions according to their predetermined characteristics and provide the selected seeds or seed portions in a usable manner for further processing.